Vai's View: Extra innings with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

A few months ago, a choir representative contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in performing with the choir to help promote the tour. Because I am a member of the LDS Church who is on local television in Philadelphia, tour organizers hoped to get some coverage.

PHILADELPHIA — The Mormon Tabernacle Choir just wrapped up an East Coast tour this week.

A few months ago, a choir representative contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in performing with the choir to help promote the tour. Because I am a member of the LDS Church who is on local television in Philadelphia — one of its stops — tour organizers hoped to get some coverage.

I informed the choir rep I would be in Utah with my wife for April Conference, and the entire week after, to visit our first grandchild.

We arranged for me to join the choir for its weekly Thursday rehearsal in the Tabernacle.

I had suggested that because the choir was visiting Major League cities like Philly, Baltimore, Atlanta, Boston and New York, they ought to sing something fun like "Take Me Out To the Ball Game." If they were lucky, the team's PR/events staff may just run it between innings, during a pitching change or the seventh-inning stretch.

The rep, Michael VonRosen, came up with the idea that choir members who have roots in those cities or a rooting interest in any of those teams, would wear a ball cap from those clubs. VonRosen made a trip to a local mall and retrieved hats for all those teams, including a Phillies hat for me. What was fascinating was watching how serious choir director Mack Wilberg is about music — even with something fun like "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." He made us sing it over and over and over and over again until we got it just right. Often, it was the pronunciation of certain words like "PARK," which for some reason sounded like "PAAAAK" — as if we were in Boston. There was a little laughter about it, but otherwise the choir was clearly respectful and deferential toward Wilberg. At one point, he stopped the music and said, "No, No, No ... It's CRACKER JACK, not JACKS! It's SINGULAR, NOT PLURAL! CRACKER JACK. From the top." Mack Wilberg's attention to detail was fascinating.

The last time the choir visited our area was 2003, and Mack was the brilliant assistant to choir director Craig Jessop, who has since returned to academia at Utah State. At that time, I was the director of public affairs for the church in the Philadelphia region.

My multi-stake committee was in charge of organizing a pre-concert reception for dignitaries, whom we were responsible for not only inviting, but ENSURING they would come.

The committee included two big names: Glenn Beck, who had a popular locally produced, syndicated radio show in Philly that would soon catapult him to New York and make him a household name; and Tammy Reid, wife of Eagles head coach Andy Reid.

Glenn helped us secure some of the city's most prominent business leaders and worked with vendors who catered the reception. Tammy's contacts brought civic, political and sports heavyweights to the reception and concert.

Tammy also suggested something fun. "What if we sent the choir sheet music of the Eagles fight song, 'Fly Eagles Fly!'?" she said. "If they sang it as an encore, I could ask Andy to lead it."

I thought it was a brilliant stroke of marketing and PR. We sent the music, only to be told by then-church director of public affairs Bruce Olsen that the choir's music must be approved by the Music Committee, which I believe was chaired then by Pres. Thomas S. Monson of the First Presidency. Olsen told me it's a tedious process and unlikely to happen.

I was surprised to get an email from Olsen a week later that it had been approved! Apparently, either President Monson thought it would be fun, or someone rushed it through committee and got it rubber-stamped.

Bottom line: The choir was rehearsing "Fly Eagles Fly" and would sing it in Philly. I arranged for the choir to appear live via satellite from Salt Lake the week before it started the tour on our morning TV program.